A Pachyderm's Ditty Prompts An Elephantine Debate

Shanthi explores her yard at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 2010. The 36-year-old Asian elephant loves blowing into a harmonica.

Mehgan Murphy
/ Smithsonian Institution

Originally published on August 30, 2012 6:06 pm

When one of the residents of the National Zoo in Washington recently revealed her love of music to zookeepers there, some ears perked up. Shanthi, a 36-year-old Asian elephant loves playing (with) her harmonica.

"She's just so interested in finding ways to make interesting noises," says elephant keeper Debbie Flinkman. "If a lock makes noise she'll flip the lock repetitively. She will blow across the top of toys that we have drilled holes in."

And when Flinkman tied a harmonica to the wall in Shanthi's enclosure, the elephant wouldn't stop blowing in it.

"It's not usually a long ditty but it always ends in this really big sort of fanfare at the end," Flinkman says, "this big blowout."

That sparked some questions: Are the noises Shanthi is making music? And what is music? Why do we have it?

"It was an evolutionary accident," says Dan Levitin, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University who has written books and papers on why we have music and why we like it.

Levitin says the accident idea is a big one. It went public back in 1997 when Harvard professor Steven Pinker, a world-renowned author and experimental psychologist, got up in front of a group of musicologists and cognitive scientists at a meeting and said words to the effect of, "You're all wasting your time because music is cheesecake."

Auditory cheesecake.

"Cheesecake is interesting," Levitin explains. "We have this great fondness for it, but we didn't evolve a taste for cheesecake. In our hunter-gatherer days, it was an adaptive strategy to load up on fats and sweets because they were very hard to find."

So because humans, for other reasons, like fats and sweets, we like cheesecake too. It doesn't mean that cheesecake serves an evolutionary purpose, goes the argument.

"And he said the same thing applies to music: that our brains evolved language, and music just hopped along for the evolutionary ride," he says.

Take the idea of a beat. Is the beat an accident? Researchers tried to train macaque monkeys for four hours a day, six days a week for a year just to tap their fingers in time to a metronome. But the monkeys couldn't do it.

But a cockatoo named Snowball? That bird can dance. Watch:

"Species that do this seem to be species that do vocal mimicry," says Greg Bryant, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at UCLA. He says cockatoos got their beat ability by accident. It helps them mimic sound and vocal phrases from their parents that they'll need to know later to get a mate or to shoo something out of their territory.

"So that might be the evolutionary origins of our ability, too, since we also can do vocal mimicry," Bryant says.

But just because it's an evolutionary accident in animals, does that mean our music, human music, is an accident too?

Ellen Dissanayake, an author who has written about the evolution and the purpose of art, says no — we definitely have music for a reason.

"All over the world, adults behave with their babies in ways they don't with each other," she says. "They make funny facial expressions, move their heads and bodies in different sorts of ways and they talk in a higher pitched tone with a lot of repetition, a lot of vocal contours, so that is, I think, very musical."

That universally sing-songy kind of duet between mothers and babies, she says, could have been the kernel, a million years ago, of what we know as music. She says it could have started as an emotional bonding system. And it worked not just for mom and baby, but for mom and neighbor and everyone around the campfire. That may be how we went from baby talk to Beethoven.

A lot of theorists believe music served this purpose of just getting along in groups.

"We now know that when people play music together, oxytocin is released," says Levitin, the McGill researcher. "This is the bonding hormone that's released when people have an orgasm together. And so you have to ask yourself, that can't be a coincidence, there had to be some evolutionary pressure there. Language doesn't produce it, music does. So the idea is that there's no primate society that I know of that has more than 18 males in the living group because the rivalries cause the groups to break apart and there's too much fighting. But human societies of thousands of members have existed for thousands of years. And the argument is that music, among other things, helped to defuse interpersonal tensions and smooth over rivalries."

At the National Zoo here in Washington, D.C., an Asian elephant recently revealed her love of music to zookeepers - at least, it sounded that way. And that got reporter Sabri Ben-Achour wondering: Where did music come from, anyway?

SABRI BEN-ACHOUR, BYLINE: So here's some music.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)

BEN-ACHOUR: And this is also music. It's from a Pygmy celebration in Eastern Congo.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL NOTES)

BEN-ACHOUR: But what about this?

(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT BLOWING ON HARMONICA)

BEN-ACHOUR: That last ditty is by Shanthi. She's kind of new. You might not have heard of her because...

FLINKMAN: She's just so interested in finding ways to make interesting noises. If a lock makes noise, she'll flip the lock repetitively. She will blow across the top of toys that we have drilled holes in.

(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLING)

BEN-ACHOUR: Flinkman ended up tying a harmonica to a wall in Shanthi's enclosure, and Shanthi would play it.

FLINKMAN: It's not usually a long ditty, but it always ends in this really big - sort of fanfare at the end, this big blowout.

(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT BLOWING ON HARMONICA)

BEN-ACHOUR: But is that music? And actually, what is music? Like, why do we have it?

DAN LEVITIN: It was an evolutionary accident.

BEN-ACHOUR: That is Dan Levitin. He's a professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University. He's written a couple books - and tons of papers - on why we have music, and why we like it. He says the accident idea is a big one. It went public back in 1997, when Harvard professor Steven Pinker - he's a world-renowned author and experimental psychologist - got up in front of a group of musicologists and cognitive scientists at their big meeting and was like, you're all wasting your time because music is...

LEVITIN: Cheesecake.

BEN-ACHOUR: Auditory cheesecake.

LEVITIN: Cheesecake is interesting. We have this great fondness for it, but we didn't evolve a taste for cheesecake. In our hunter-gatherer days, it was an adaptive strategy to load up on fats and sweets because they were very hard to find. [POST-BROADCAST CLARIFICATION: Levitin explains the "cheesecake" theory, but he does not espouse the theory himself. He believes there is compelling evidence that music is a product of evolution.]

BEN-ACHOUR: So because we, for other reasons, like fats and sweets - we like cheesecake, too - it doesn't mean that cheesecake serves an evolutionary purpose, goes the argument.

LEVITIN: And he said the same thing applies to music; that our brains evolved language, and music just hopped along for the evolutionary ride.

BEN-ACHOUR: So let's take the idea of the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat. (VOICE MANIPULATION)

We need the beat for music, but is it an accident, too? Well, a lot of animals are really bad at it. So, for example, macaques - these are monkeys; they share a lot with us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MACAQUE NOISES)

BEN-ACHOUR: Researchers tried to train these guys to just tap their fingers in time to a metronome.

(SOUNDBITE OF METRONOME)

BEN-ACHOUR: Four hours a day, they practiced; six days a week - for a year. The monkeys could not do it. No beat. No music. And then there's this guy.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)

BACKSTREET BOYS: (Singing) Rock your body right.

(SOUNDBITE OF COCKATOO)

BEN-ACHOUR: That's the cockatoo named Snowball. And he's dancing - like, straight up-dancing; keeping time, bobbing his head, kicking his feet; no problem keeping a beat. Now, cockatoos don't dance in the wild - as far as we know - so Snowball probably didn't evolve to dance to the Backstreet Boys. But he definitely can.

GREG BRYANT: Species that do this, seem to be species that do vocal mimicry.

BEN-ACHOUR: That's Greg Bryant. He's an assistant professor at UCLA's Department of Communication Studies. He says cockatoos got their beat ability by accident. It's helps them mimic - like, learn sounds and vocal phrases from their parents that they'll need to know; to later get a mate, or to shoo something out of their territory.

BRYANT: And so that might be the evolutionary origins of our ability, too, since we also can do vocal mimicry.

BEN-ACHOUR: But just because it's an evolutionary accident in animals, does that mean our music - human music - is an accident, too? Really?

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO OF MOTHER TALKING TO COOING BABY)

Ellen Dissanayake is author of "Art and Intimacy." She's written a lot about the evolution and purpose of art and she says no, we totally have music for a reason. And she explains it, she's watching a video of a mother and her baby.

ELLEN DISSANAYAKE: All over the world, adults behave with their babies in ways they don't with each other. They make funny facial expressions; they move their heads and bodies in different sorts of ways; and they talk in a higher-pitched tone, with a lot of repetition, a lot of vocal contours. So that is, I think, very musical.

BEN-ACHOUR: That universally sing-songy kind of duet between mothers and babies, she says, could have been the kernel, a million years ago, of what we now know as music. She says it could have started as an emotional bonding system. And it worked not just for mom and baby but mom and neighbor, and then neighbor and everyone around the campfire. That may be how we went from baby talk...

(SOUNDBITE OF BABY COOING)

BEN-ACHOUR: ...to Beethoven.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BEN-ACHOUR: And a lot of theorists actually believe music served this purpose of - well, just getting along in groups.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IMAGINE")

JOHN LENNON: (Singing) Imagine all the people living life in peace. Yoo-hoo...

BEN-ACHOUR: Here's Dan Levitin, from McGill University...

LEVITIN: We now know that when people play music together, oxytocin is released. This is the bonding hormone that's released when people have an orgasm together. And then, so you have to ask yourself - well, that can't be a coincidence. There had to be some evolutionary pressure there. Language doesn't produce it; music does. So the idea is that there's no primate society that I know of, that has more than 18 males in the living group because the rivalries cause the groups to break apart; and there's too much fighting. But human societies of thousands of members have existed for thousands of years. And the argument is that music, among other things, helped to defuse interpersonal tensions and to smooth over rivalries.

BEN-ACHOUR: So maybe music really did tame the savage beast. Maybe it tamed us. For NPR News, I'm Sabri Ben-Achour.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)

WERTHEIMER: This is WEEKEND EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.